Misery Loves Company
by DixieH
Summary: This is a post Blind Spot fic. Alex and Bobby talk about what happened and eventually they talk about how they feel about one another. This is full of angst and pain and suffering and has a happily ever after kind of ending. Now 4 parts and an epilogue.
1. Chapter 1

This is a post Blind Spot fic. Alex and Bobby talk about what happened and eventually they talk about how they feel about one another - sort of. This is full of angst and pain and suffering and has a happily ever after kind of ending. I thought this needed chapters because of the length, but it didn't really have natural divisions - so I did the best I could. As usual, I only write when I'm frantically busy with 6 other projects, so although this has 3 parts, it likely won't be completely posted until Friday because I may have to change a couple of adjectives in part 3. - Dix.

No copywrite infringement intended or implied. These characters and their universe belong to others and not to me.

**Misery Loves Company**

**Part One**

"You look like crap," Eames says acknowledging his arrival with a nod. Goren's suit is rumpled and he's unshaven. His eyes are red rimmed. He shrugs and runs a hand over the back of his neck. It's the beginning of their shift and he's out of sorts. Lately, she thinks, he is always out of sorts.

He pulls out the chair at his desk and drops into it. He looks at Eames without speaking. From this vantage point, he can see she is dressed in the uniform that she often wears to work; a jacket over a t-shirt. Her hair hangs loosely around her face and drifts across one eye. She leaves it where it is and meets his look. On the outside, everything is the same.

To others she hasn't changed at all. They marvel at how well she has weathered the storm, but to his eye, she wears a disguise. She is quieter now and her wit has lost its razor's edge. She is frayed and worn where she was once confident and bold. It niggles at his brain when they're together and outright worries him when they're apart. She is the same and yet shattered. He is certain enough of this to respond in kind.

"You too." He says finally and she smirks and shakes her head, because he's right and so far, he's the only one who has noticed.

"I'm having trouble sleeping. " She says leaning in to decrease the length her words must travel to reach him.

"Understandable. " He says quietly. She's been back on the job less than a month.

She looks away. She doesn't want his pity. "What's your excuse?" She says with more force than she means.

"Same. Not sleeping." He says softly. She looks at him again and wonders.

//

They wander her neighbourhood grocery aisles for most of thirty minutes after that shift. She finally gives up in the produce section. She was thinking salad and chicken, but he obviously has something else in mind, because there's an eggplant beside the spinach and the wine. She thinks about asking, but she doesn't want to talk about vegetables. He pushes the cart and continues to add ingredients from the recipe in his head. She follows along, content with his company in this place.

In the check out line, they're distant. He unloads the cart and she stands and watches the cashier ring in and bag the groceries. When the cashier announces the total, Goren open his wallet and hands Alex a twenty. Eames gives the cashier Goren's twenty and one of her own and hands him the change. He carries the bags to the car.

It's her car, a year or two newer than the last one, a different model and a different colour. The old one is still in the impound lot tagged as evidence. Eventually it will be sold for scrap. Her dad picked this one out and had the dealer deliver it to her house before she was released from the hospital.

She prepares the chicken while he chops vegetables beside her. Bobby fills a dish with layers of vegetables and cheese. While they wait for the chicken and the casserole to cook, they drink red wine and laugh at things Mike Logan said. When the first bottle is nearly finished, the timer on the stove beeps and Bobby puts potholders on big hands to lift the chicken and the casserole out of the oven. The chicken is brown and the dish is bubbly with melted cheese and rich with roasted vegetables. Alex sets the table with a cloth and dishes.

They open another bottle of wine and eat garlic bread, chicken and vegetables. They talk about the past. They tell stories from their childhood about summer camp and school friends and they laugh. It's ridiculous. They both know that the stories and the laughter are whitewash to cover the present pain that afflicts them. When supper is finished and Alex is too full to eat another bite, they shuffle the plates and cutlery into the dishwasher and share the last of the wine between their glasses. Then they settle at either end of the sofa.


	2. Chapter 2

Thanks for reading so far! - Dix.

**Misery Loves Company**

**Part Two**

"Are you having nightmares?" He asks. The doctor is in.

"No," She shakes her head. "I wake up between 2 and 3 and sometimes I can't get back to sleep." He hears what she doesn't say. There is no need for her to explain that this is the hour she was taken from her home. This is one of half a dozen ways her body chooses to remind her that she is no longer safe.

"What's the psychiatrist say?" She's seeing someone from NYPD's Psych Services every week. More than once her appointment has intersected their shift and Goren has spent the hour waiting in the car at the curb.

Eames shakes her head and her hair dances in front of her face. "She says that talking about it and time are the cure. "

Bobby nods. It is the right thing for the psychiatrist to say, but he wonders if there are enough words and enough time to undo the pain that Jo Gage has caused.

"Have you thought about moving?"

She nods. Everyone suggests this - like somehow the house is responsible for taking her and chaining her and terrifying her. "My husband and I lived here." She says finally. She can no longer say his name without thinking of the person who shares his name. "I don't want to leave him behind."

//

She says, "So why aren't you sleeping?"

He shakes his head and looks away. He cannot lie to her or tell her less than all of what is true. He doesn't want to share this burden. He doesn't want to tell her that every time he closes his eyes, it's her body he sees torn and bloody in the trunk of the car. He can't tell her that he feels guilty for thinking it and for dreaming it. He would rather avoid the question. She sees his reluctance, but she won't allow him to deflect the question.

"What's keeping you awake?" She asks again.

He looks at her sideways. He hasn't talked to anybody since that week. Nobody hung him from a ceiling, or butchered him and rolled him into the trunk of a car. Maybe it's the wine or the lack of sleep or just the weeks of worry over her. Whatever it is; it has built up to the point where he can no longer hold on any more. He sets the glass on the table at his arm and wipes a hand across his face. He has no right to be wounded body and soul by this case, but he can't get past it. He can't let it go. He shakes his head.

"Spit it out. Time can't heal what you won't talk about." It's her shrink talking. She knows it and he knows it.

She is right as she is about many things. She is right and also wrong. Because if he opens this box more than just his nightmares will escape. She will know more than she should about his head and his heart and his soul.

She prods him again. "Tell me one thing."

He nods and takes a sip; postponing, diverting, procrastinating.

"I dream about you."

She hears what he says. "When I was kidnapped? "

It is so quiet he can hear the soft intake of her breath. He can hear a clock somewhere marking time, he can hear his own heart compressing to pump and releasing to refill. He closes his eyes and answers her with a nod.

"What else?"

"I was the one." He says looking at something across the room. "I was the one who pried open the trunk of your car."

She nods like this wasn't unexpected news.

He turns to face her. His face is hard with effort to control the memories. Finally, he says, "In the dream when I open the trunk." His eyes flutter closed, because it isn't so much when he falls asleep as every time he closes his eyes that he sees her. His voice is very quiet. "It's you" he says. "When I open the trunk and I pull back the tarp."

She reaches out her hand and he takes it in his own. Without letting go, she unfolds off the sofa and moves to sit closer.

"When you opened the trunk, you were sure it would be me." The words are hard for her to say, they come out halting and filled with emotion, but they are harder for him to hear and he can only nod by way of response and squeeze the bridge of his nose.

"You should talk to somebody."

"I could." He says but he's shaking his head. He's a great bottler up of emotions.

//

"It wasn't your fault." She says after a while.

He turns in the seat and their knees bump. "I was in his sway, " He says "I was so impressed with Declan's work. I never understood what it was doing to Jo." He pulls his hand out of hers and cradles his head between his hands. "I should have known."

"No," she says sharply. "Don't say that it," she says. You're feeling guilty for something, which never had anything to do with you. Take yourself out of her child hood and her father still would have used her like a file clerk. It was him, Bobby. Her father turned her into - " Eames swallows the word monster and says instead - "what she became."

Bobby is silent and still for a very long minute. When he speaks, she thinks at first that she has misheard him because his words are so quiet. "You could request a new partner."

She takes a moment to form just the right response. "I could. But I'd get some ass that doesn't know axle grease from hand lotion and my clearance rate would go to hell."

He looks at her sideways and catches the grin that tells him that she is teasing. He doesn't let it go. "It might help you get your life back."

Tears well in her eyes. Not for the last time she finds that, what happened to her has shattered someone else she cares about. "I never lost my life Bobby." She says it quietly without accusing. "I lost control for a couple of days that's all. And moving out of this house or quitting my job or" Here she pauses and inhales deeply. "Or getting a new partner - none of it will undo what happened. I just have to figure out a way through it. A way to live with it."

He nods. "I wish I had your determination."

"So maybe you should talk to someone at Psych Services.'

He shakes his head. "It isn't about me." He has the urge to kill Declan or Jo or himself occasionally. The crazy part of his brain wants him to believe that one death might somehow unwind what happened to Eames; that one more death will absolve him of the responsibility he feels for Jo Gages' pathology. These are the thoughts he is afraid of. He feels helpless in the shadow of this hurricane that swept through their lives. He wants to make her forget. He wants to forget.


	3. Chapter 3

**Misery Loves Company**

**Part Three**

The emotion and the wine have given her the shadow of a headache. Alex stands and stretches. "Tea?" she says walking away from the sofa. She flicks on the kitchen light. Bobby follows and leans in the doorway.

She's filling the kettle. "I should go." He says. She shuts off the water with a snap.

"You could," she says without looking at him, "But I'd rather you stayed."

The words are out of her mouth before she understands what they mean. They hang in the air for a moment too long because she's rationalizing. She tells herself they are not an invitation to something more than tea and conversation. She tells herself that there is no truth to the desire which spawned them. She tells herself he is her partner. She stands with her back to him and carefully retracts the offer.

"You're the only person that understands this Bobby, because it happened to you too." Then she turns to look at him. "I could really use the company." She tries a smile. She can't read his expression and when he doesn't move, she puts the kettle on the stove and pulls two mugs out of the cupboard.

"I used to dream about you." He says to her back. As usual he has heard everything said and unsaid and because he has already told her more than he ever planned to - this further admission does not seem too much. She's reaching for the sugar bowl, but the change of tense stills the movement.

"Before." He says.

She turns. He's staring a hole in the floor and his ears are pink. Suddenly her heart is pounding so loudly that she has trouble hearing what he says next.

"That's what is so hard now. I used to dream about you - before." He looks at her then and the intensity of the feeling in his gaze takes her by surprise.

She tries to shrug it off. "We're friends, partners. We spend a lot of time together on the job and off. It's natural." She's trying to let him off the hook.

A small smile crosses his face because the dreams he had before had little to do with their friendship and even less to do with their partnership. He shakes his head and his expression changes. "The whole time," he says. "The whole time you were missing, along with everything else, I wondered how I could go on without you."

"Bobby." Fear makes her voice rise. She needs to stop him, before he goes too far. Before he says too much. "Don't. ~ Please. ~ Don't."

//

The kettle whistles then and they retreat; he to a spot near the living room window and she to a place inside herself free of entanglements.

She brings him a mug of tea after a few minutes and their fingers touch as she hands it to him. "Will we be ok?" He asks. This is really the most important question for them both.

She nods and then brings the mug to her lips. She wants to move ahead. She wants to forget. She wants them to be ok. But she doesn't trust herself to speak.

He smiles then and nods. "About before. . . If it's company you need - that's what I need right now too."

"I can't." She says. "I can't start something now with ~ anybody, not now, on the heels of this, I can't."

He's nodding as she speaks. When she finishes he reaches for her hand and they sit again side by side on the sofa. No longer just partners but something more and something worse. The comfortable silences now are broken and disagreeable.

_Thanks for reading along. - Dix._


	4. Chapter 4

**Misery Loves Company**

**Part Four**

It's ridiculous really. Two adults who know their own hearts and minds so frightened by the possibility of 'what if' and 'maybe' that they sit woodenly in the slowly fading light. Alex works through it with a speed that would please her therapist.

What she wants most of all is her life back. She wants to be free of the past - not to ignore what happened, but to heal enough to move on. She doesn't want to be immobilized by what happened. What she hasn't allowed herself to say out loud to another soul is that she had only a single regret while she was kidnapped and that regret centred around Bobby Goren. Finding the right words is difficult and time consuming. Finally, when she can't put it off another minute, she sets her mug on the coffee table with a loud thunk, gives his hand a squeeze and says in a hoarse whisper. "I'm beat. I need to go to bed and you should come." She walks away then without a word or a glance.

Bobby's left sitting on her sofa in the dark, wondering if he has misunderstood her. He wonders if his hearing has failed. However, he hears a door open and then close. He hears water running and a toilet flush, more water, doors, and then she's back in the living room.

"Honestly, Bobby, I don't usually have to ask twice!" Eames is wearing a lavender coloured robe. It's well wrapped around her, but it doesn't begin to reach her knees. Her feet are bare. He's never seen her feet before.

"Eames," He shakes his head, "Alex ~ I ~ you're right. This is bad timing."

"You know what? It is bad timing, but I'm not going to let some crazy person deprive me of a life one moment longer. Come to bed with me. If my life's going to be screwed up, let me at least be the one making the mess." She turns on the spot and retreats to the bedroom. He watches her go.

//

It's quite a speech really and she has made a good point, unfortunately, Bobby is having some difficulty processing her words. As she turned, he caught a glimpse of bare skin above her knee that makes him wonder what it might be like to lay his hand on that part of her leg. He stands finally and follows her into the bedroom, but it isn't reason that drives him, it's that flash of pale skin.

In the bedroom, she greets him with a small smile and gives him a nod which directs him to the bathroom. When he comes out, she's pulls back the covers and he sits down in the space. She is lying on her side. There is a soft glow of streetlight beyond the window blind, so he can't see much of her expression, but can see that she has removed the robe. He can see the top half of what might be a nightgown. It looks paper-thin and has an iridescence that sparkles even in the low light. She looks like he's dreamed she'll look, soft and sweet and glad to see him. Sitting on the bed, he debates again, how much of his own clothing to remove. He finally settles on pants and socks, leaving his shirt and underwear in place. He slides between the sheets and wonders if this is the beginning of a dream or a nightmare.

//

The bed is firm and the pillows soft and the duvet warm and heavy and he's trying to think about something, which will take his mind off what might perhaps happen next, when she snorts beside him.

"Are you afraid?" She asks.

"Terrified." He whispers back.

"Only one solution for that." She says flipping the covers off him. In the next moment, she is straddling him, carefully ignoring the look on his face while she unbuttons his shirt. The filmy nightgown settles around her. In the dim light, he sees the arch of her neck and feels the sweep of her hair across his chest. He runs his hands across her back, her hips and rests them one on each thigh. She has unbuttoned him and is running flat hands across his chest. He takes her arms and stills the motion. She looks at him startled and fearful.

He can hardly say the words, his throat is dry and the atmosphere oppressive with his own need , but she is too important to miss this step. He clears his throat and finally manages "-Lex," She nods, her eyes wide in the dim light. "Are you sure?" Now she sees his fear and she relaxes and smiles.

"Certain."

He pulls her down then, down toward him. Their kisses are fierce with long corralled desire. Her skin is warm and smooth to his touch and she makes small noises of pleasure as he slides inside her. They fit well together, but they do not spend any time over pleasantries.

//

Afterwards he holds her close beside him and turns enough to brush kisses across her forehead and cheek. "Are you still certain?" He asks. He feels her head bob beside him.

"Yes," she said. "No regrets and you - are you ok?"

"Yes."

"Bobby?" She says after a few minutes. "Can we do that again, do you think?"

He shakes his head. "Not yet," He says, "But again later and again after that if you like."

"I think I would." She admits in the dark.

They don't talk much more, except when she roles over, she says, "Stay if you can." He is on the edge of sleep but he murmurs a response and soon they are both cocooned and peaceful.

//

Bobby wakes first, but slowly. He is initially disoriented in the unfamiliar room, in the unfamiliar bed. It takes a few moments of deliberation before an explosion of memory provides him with information about the immediate past. Eames is sprawled on her stomach, beside him, with her face buried in the crook of her arm. He resists the temptation to wake her and pepper her with questions. Instead he rolls quietly out of bed. She shifts slightly, but sleeps on as he rises and showers. When her alarm goes off twenty minutes later, she finds him in the kitchen making coffee.

"Morning." She says. Her hair is tousled and he rearranges an errant strand before he kisses her.

"Can you give me a ride to work this morning?" He asks. Twenty minutes, the hot shower and the promise of coffee have cleared his mind. He has come to the same conclusion Eames reached the night before ~ life is short.

She laughs. "I can manage that."

He smiles and returns to coffee making while she heads for the shower.

There is territory to negotiate, fears, and uncertainties yet to deal with, but much is as it was before. First, they are partners and then they are friends, but now and maybe forever misery loves company as much as he loves her.

_**Thanks for reading along - evidently I can't count. This turned into 4 parts and an epilogue - so one more to go! - Dix.**_


	5. Epilogue

**Misery Loves Company**

**Epilogue: Three Weeks Later / ****MCS Interview Room **

"Goren."

Bobby looks up. The table he is sitting at in the interview room is covered with files. There's a stack at his elbow, three or four open in layers in front of him and another pile on the chair beside him.

"How's it going?" Captain Danny Ross asks.

Goren and Eames have been hunting this particular needle in a haystack most of two days. They are comparing case files on twenty-two open homicides. Some are as recent as the previous week and others are years old.

"Nothing yet."

"Keep me posted, Chief wants to be the first to know if they're connected."

Goren nods, then drops his gaze back to one of the open files. Ross takes two steps toward the door, then turns back to Goren.

"How's your partner doing?"

Goren looks up again, distracted. "Eames?"

"She seems better the last couple of weeks. Don't you think?"

Goren looks past Ross to where Alex is seated at her desk. She has the phone pressed between her shoulder and her ear and she is jotting notes on the pad in front of her.

"Maybe." he agrees with a tilt of his head.

"Is she still seeing someone at Psych?"

"Seeing someone?" Goren repeats misunderstanding.

Ross shakes his head, annoyed. For a smart guy sometimes Goren is incredibly dense.

"Is she still talking to a shrink?"

"Oh" Goren nods. "Yeah."

"Good, it seems to be working." Ross walks out of the room still shaking his head. He's been captain of MCS less than six months and already Goren is making him crazy.

Bobby nods still looking at Eames "Seeing someone seems to be working." He says to himself. He grins at the thought and returns to his work.

_**Fin**_

_**OK - NOW I'm done. I just can't leave well enough alone. Every time I finish a story, I have to know how it plays out in the squad room - all sorts of scenarios rolled through my head but you all know how much I love to mess with Ross so… Dix.**_


End file.
